1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die

So I stumbled upon this list on Pinterest earlier today (also available below) and have spent the past half hour going through it. All 1001 entries. It’s from the book of the same name, 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die.

And as an English Literature graduate, I’m ashamed to say my total only came up to 48!! I’m starting to regret those years of briefly skimming books so I had just enough knowledge to churn out an essay. So I can’t count the dozens of books that I couldn’t quite classify as having read (even if I intimately know the plots and can probably pull out a good quote if asked). That’s my excuse. I know there are a lot of these lists out there with varying entries (although respected book critics have evidently provided the entries for this particular book), and not reaching a high number on this list does not in any way make you a lesser human being (I think).

What’s your number? Are any one of these titles your favourite? And is there anything that’s not on here that should be?

2000s

Never Let Me Go – Kazuo Ishiguro

Saturday – Ian McEwan

On Beauty – Zadie Smith

Slow Man – J.M. Coetzee

Adjunct: An Undigest – Peter Manson

The Sea – John Banville

The Red Queen – Margaret Drabble

The Plot Against America – Philip Roth

The Master – Colm Tóibín

Vanishing Point – David Markson

The Lambs of London – Peter Ackroyd

Dining on Stones – Iain Sinclair

Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell

Drop City – T. Coraghessan Boyle

The Colour – Rose Tremain

Thursbitch – Alan Garner

The Light of Day – Graham Swift

What I Loved – Siri Hustvedt

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time – Mark Haddon

Islands – Dan Sleigh

Elizabeth Costello – J.M. Coetzee

London Orbital – Iain Sinclair

Family Matters – Rohinton Mistry

Fingersmith – Sarah Waters

The Double – José Saramago

Everything is Illuminated – Jonathan Safran Foer

Unless – Carol Shields

Kafka on the Shore – Haruki Murakami

The Story of Lucy Gault – William Trevor

That They May Face the Rising Sun – John McGahern

In the Forest – Edna O’Brien

Shroud – John Banville

Middlesex – Jeffrey Eugenides

Youth – J.M. Coetzee

Dead Air – Iain Banks

Nowhere Man – Aleksandar Hemon

The Book of Illusions – Paul Auster

Gabriel’s Gift – Hanif Kureishi

Austerlitz – W.G. Sebald

Platform – Michael Houellebecq

Schooling – Heather McGowan

Atonement – Ian McEwan

The Corrections – Jonathan Franzen

Don’t Move – Margaret Mazzantini

The Body Artist – Don DeLillo

Fury – Salman Rushdie

At Swim, Two Boys – Jamie O’Neill

Choke – Chuck Palahniuk

Life of Pi – Yann Martel

The Feast of the Goat – Mario Vargos Llosa

An Obedient Father – Akhil Sharma

The Devil and Miss Prym – Paulo Coelho

Spring Flowers, Spring Frost – Ismail Kadare

White Teeth – Zadie Smith

The Heart of Redness – Zakes Mda

Under the Skin – Michel Faber

Ignorance – Milan Kundera

Nineteen Seventy Seven – David Peace

Celestial Harmonies – Péter Esterházy

City of God – E.L. Doctorow

How the Dead Live – Will Self

The Human Stain – Philip Roth

The Blind Assassin – Margaret Atwood

After the Quake – Haruki Murakami

Small Remedies – Shashi Deshpande

Super-Cannes – J.G. Ballard

House of Leaves – Mark Z. Danielewski

Blonde – Joyce Carol Oates

Pastoralia – George Saunders

1900s

Timbuktu – Paul Auster

The Romantics – Pankaj Mishra

Cryptonomicon – Neal Stephenson

As If I Am Not There – Slavenka Drakuli?

Everything You Need – A.L. Kennedy

Fear and Trembling – Amélie Nothomb

The Ground Beneath Her Feet – Salman Rushdie

Disgrace – J.M. Coetzee

Sputnik Sweetheart – Haruki Murakami

Elementary Particles – Michel Houellebecq

Intimacy – Hanif Kureishi

Amsterdam – Ian McEwan

Cloudsplitter – Russell Banks

All Souls Day – Cees Nooteboom

The Talk of the Town – Ardal O’Hanlon

Tipping the Velvet – Sarah Waters

The Poisonwood Bible – Barbara Kingsolver

Glamorama – Bret Easton Ellis

Another World – Pat Barker

The Hours – Michael Cunningham

Veronika Decides to Die – Paulo Coelho

Mason & Dixon – Thomas Pynchon

The God of Small Things – Arundhati Roy

Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden

Great Apes – Will Self

Enduring Love – Ian McEwan

Underworld – Don DeLillo

Jack Maggs – Peter Carey

The Life of Insects – Victor Pelevin

American Pastoral – Philip Roth

The Untouchable – John Banville

Silk – Alessandro Baricco

Cocaine Nights – J.G. Ballard

Hallucinating Foucault – Patricia Duncker

Fugitive Pieces – Anne Michaels

The Ghost Road – Pat Barker

Forever a Stranger – Hella Haasse

Infinite Jest – David Foster Wallace

The Clay Machine-Gun – Victor Pelevin

Alias Grace – Margaret Atwood

The Unconsoled – Kazuo Ishiguro

Morvern Callar – Alan Warner

The Information – Martin Amis

The Moor’s Last Sigh – Salman Rushdie

Sabbath’s Theater – Philip Roth

The Rings of Saturn – W.G. Sebald

The Reader – Bernhard Schlink

A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry

Love’s Work – Gillian Rose

The End of the Story – Lydia Davis

Mr. Vertigo – Paul Auster

The Folding Star – Alan Hollinghurst

Whatever – Michel Houellebecq

Land – Park Kyong-ni

The Master of Petersburg – J.M. Coetzee

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle – Haruki Murakami

Pereira Declares: A Testimony – Antonio Tabucchi

City Sister Silver – Jàchym Topol

How Late It Was, How Late – James Kelman

Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis de Bernieres

Felicia’s Journey – William Trevor

Disappearance – David Dabydeen

The Invention of Curried Sausage – Uwe Timm

The Shipping News – E. Annie Proulx

Trainspotting – Irvine Welsh

Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks

Looking for the Possible Dance – A.L. Kennedy

Operation Shylock – Philip Roth

Complicity – Iain Banks

On Love – Alain de Botton

What a Carve Up! – Jonathan Coe

A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth

The Stone Diaries – Carol Shields

The Virgin Suicides – Jeffrey Eugenides

The House of Doctor Dee – Peter Ackroyd

The Robber Bride – Margaret Atwood

The Emigrants – W.G. Sebald

The Secret History – Donna Tartt

Life is a Caravanserai – Emine Özdamar

The Discovery of Heaven – Harry Mulisch

A Heart So White – Javier Marias

Possessing the Secret of Joy – Alice Walker

Indigo – Marina Warner

The Crow Road – Iain Banks

Written on the Body – Jeanette Winterson

Jazz – Toni Morrison

The English Patient – Michael Ondaatje

Smilla’s Sense of Snow – Peter Høeg

The Butcher Boy – Patrick McCabe

Black Water – Joyce Carol Oates

The Heather Blazing – Colm Tóibín

Asphodel – H.D. (Hilda Doolittle)

Black Dogs – Ian McEwan

Hideous Kinky – Esther Freud

Arcadia – Jim Crace

Wild Swans – Jung Chang

American Psycho – Bret Easton Ellis

Time’s Arrow – Martin Amis

Mao II – Don DeLillo

Typical – Padgett Powell

Regeneration – Pat Barker

Downriver – Iain Sinclair

Señor Vivo and the Coca Lord – Louis de Bernieres

Wise Children – Angela Carter

Get Shorty – Elmore Leonard

Amongst Women – John McGahern

Vineland – Thomas Pynchon

Vertigo – W.G. Sebald

Stone Junction – Jim Dodge

The Music of Chance – Paul Auster

The Things They Carried – Tim O’Brien

A Home at the End of the World – Michael Cunningham

Like Life – Lorrie Moore

Possession – A.S. Byatt

The Buddha of Suburbia – Hanif Kureishi

The Midnight Examiner – William Kotzwinkle

A Disaffection – James Kelman

Sexing the Cherry – Jeanette Winterson

Moon Palace – Paul Auster

Billy Bathgate – E.L. Doctorow

Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro

The Melancholy of Resistance – László Krasznahorkai

The Temple of My Familiar – Alice Walker

The Trick is to Keep Breathing – Janice Galloway

The History of the Siege of Lisbon – José Saramago

Like Water for Chocolate – Laura Esquivel

A Prayer for Owen Meany – John Irving

London Fields – Martin Amis

The Book of Evidence – John Banville

Cat’s Eye – Margaret Atwood

Foucault’s Pendulum – Umberto Eco

The Beautiful Room is Empty – Edmund White

Wittgenstein’s Mistress – David Markson

The Satanic Verses – Salman Rushdie

The Swimming-Pool Library – Alan Hollinghurst

Oscar and Lucinda – Peter Carey

Libra – Don DeLillo

The Player of Games – Iain M. Banks

Nervous Conditions – Tsitsi Dangarembga

The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul – Douglas Adams

Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency – Douglas Adams

The Radiant Way – Margaret Drabble

The Afternoon of a Writer – Peter Handke

The Black Dahlia – James Ellroy

The Passion – Jeanette Winterson

The Pigeon – Patrick Süskind

The Child in Time – Ian McEwan

Cigarettes – Harry Mathews

The Bonfire of the Vanities – Tom Wolfe

The New York Trilogy – Paul Auster

World’s End – T. Coraghessan Boyle

Enigma of Arrival – V.S. Naipaul

The Taebek Mountains – Jo Jung-rae

Beloved – Toni Morrison

Anagrams – Lorrie Moore

Matigari – Ngugi Wa Thiong’o

Marya – Joyce Carol Oates

Watchmen – Alan Moore & David Gibbons

The Old Devils – Kingsley Amis

Lost Language of Cranes – David Leavitt

An Artist of the Floating World – Kazuo Ishiguro

Extinction – Thomas Bernhard

Foe – J.M. Coetzee

The Drowned and the Saved – Primo Levi

Reasons to Live – Amy Hempel

The Parable of the Blind – Gert Hofmann

Love in the Time of Cholera – Gabriel García Márquez

Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit – Jeanette Winterson

The Cider House Rules – John Irving

A Maggot – John Fowles

Less Than Zero – Bret Easton Ellis

Contact – Carl Sagan

The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood

Perfume – Patrick Süskind

Old Masters – Thomas Bernhard

White Noise – Don DeLillo

Queer – William Burroughs

Hawksmoor – Peter Ackroyd

Legend – David Gemmell

Dictionary of the Khazars – Milorad Pavi?

The Bus Conductor Hines – James Kelman

The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis – José Saramago

The Lover – Marguerite Duras

Empire of the Sun – J.G. Ballard

The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks

Nights at the Circus – Angela Carter

The Unbearable Lightness of Being – Milan Kundera

Blood and Guts in High School – Kathy Acker

Neuromancer – William Gibson

Flaubert’s Parrot – Julian Barnes

Money: A Suicide Note – Martin Amis

Shame – Salman Rushdie

Worstward Ho – Samuel Beckett

Fools of Fortune – William Trevor

La Brava – Elmore Leonard

Waterland – Graham Swift

The Life and Times of Michael K – J.M. Coetzee

The Diary of Jane Somers – Doris Lessing

The Piano Teacher – Elfriede Jelinek

The Sorrow of Belgium – Hugo Claus

If Not Now, When? – Primo Levi

A Boy’s Own Story – Edmund White

The Color Purple – Alice Walker

Wittgenstein’s Nephew – Thomas Bernhard

A Pale View of Hills – Kazuo Ishiguro

Schindler’s Ark – Thomas Keneally

The House of the Spirits – Isabel Allende

The Newton Letter – John Banville

On the Black Hill – Bruce Chatwin

Concrete – Thomas Bernhard

The Names – Don DeLillo

Rabbit is Rich – John Updike

Lanark: A Life in Four Books – Alasdair Gray

The Comfort of Strangers – Ian McEwan

July’s People – Nadine Gordimer

Summer in Baden-Baden – Leonid Tsypkin

Broken April – Ismail Kadare

Waiting for the Barbarians – J.M. Coetzee

Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie

Rites of Passage – William Golding

Rituals – Cees Nooteboom

Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole

City Primeval – Elmore Leonard

The Name of the Rose – Umberto Eco

The Book of Laughter and Forgetting – Milan Kundera

Smiley’s People – John Le Carré

Shikasta – Doris Lessing

A Bend in the River – V.S. Naipaul

Burger’s Daughter – Nadine Gordimer

The Safety Net – Heinrich Böll

If On a Winter’s Night a Traveler – Italo Calvino

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams

The Cement Garden – Ian McEwan

The World According to Garp – John Irving

Life: A User’s Manual – Georges Perec

The Sea, The Sea – Iris Murdoch

The Singapore Grip – J.G. Farrell

Yes – Thomas Bernhard

The Virgin in the Garden – A.S. Byatt

In the Heart of the Country – J.M. Coetzee

The Passion of New Eve – Angela Carter

Delta of Venus – Anaïs Nin

The Shining – Stephen King

Dispatches – Michael Herr

Petals of Blood – Ngugi Wa Thiong’o

Song of Solomon – Toni Morrison

The Hour of the Star – Clarice Lispector

The Left-Handed Woman – Peter Handke

Ratner’s Star – Don DeLillo

The Public Burning – Robert Coover

Interview With the Vampire – Anne Rice

Cutter and Bone – Newton Thornburg

Amateurs – Donald Barthelme

Patterns of Childhood – Christa Wolf

Autumn of the Patriarch – Gabriel García Márquez

W, or the Memory of Childhood – Georges Perec

A Dance to the Music of Time – Anthony Powell

Grimus – Salman Rushdie

The Dead Father – Donald Barthelme

Fateless – Imre Kertész

Willard and His Bowling Trophies – Richard Brautigan

High Rise – J.G. Ballard

Humboldt’s Gift – Saul Bellow

Dead Babies – Martin Amis

Correction – Thomas Bernhard

Ragtime – E.L. Doctorow

The Fan Man – William Kotzwinkle

Dusklands – J.M. Coetzee

The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum – Heinrich Böll

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy – John Le Carré

Breakfast of Champions – Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

Fear of Flying – Erica Jong

A Question of Power – Bessie Head

The Siege of Krishnapur – J.G. Farrell

The Castle of Crossed Destinies – Italo Calvino

Crash – J.G. Ballard

The Honorary Consul – Graham Greene

Gravity’s Rainbow – Thomas Pynchon

The Black Prince – Iris Murdoch

Sula – Toni Morrison

Invisible Cities – Italo Calvino

The Breast – Philip Roth

The Summer Book – Tove Jansson

G – John Berger

Surfacing – Margaret Atwood

House Mother Normal – B.S. Johnson

In A Free State – V.S. Naipaul

The Book of Daniel – E.L. Doctorow

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas – Hunter S. Thompson

Group Portrait With Lady – Heinrich Böll

The Wild Boys – William Burroughs

Rabbit Redux – John Updike

The Sea of Fertility – Yukio Mishima

The Driver’s Seat – Muriel Spark

The Ogre – Michael Tournier

The Bluest Eye – Toni Morrison

Goalie’s Anxiety at the Penalty Kick – Peter Handke

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings – Maya Angelou

Mercier et Camier – Samuel Beckett

Troubles – J.G. Farrell

Jahrestage – Uwe Johnson

The Atrocity Exhibition – J.G. Ballard

Tent of Miracles – Jorge Amado

Pricksongs and Descants – Robert Coover

Blind Man With a Pistol – Chester Hines

Slaughterhouse-five – Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

The French Lieutenant’s Woman – John Fowles

The Green Man – Kingsley Amis

Portnoy’s Complaint – Philip Roth

The Godfather – Mario Puzo

Ada – Vladimir Nabokov

Them – Joyce Carol Oates

A Void/Avoid – Georges Perec

Eva Trout – Elizabeth Bowen

Myra Breckinridge – Gore Vidal

The Nice and the Good – Iris Murdoch

Belle du Seigneur – Albert Cohen

Cancer Ward – Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn

The First Circle – Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn

2001: A Space Odyssey – Arthur C. Clarke

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? – Philip K. Dick

Dark as the Grave Wherein My Friend is Laid – Malcolm Lowry

The German Lesson – Siegfried Lenz

In Watermelon Sugar – Richard Brautigan

A Kestrel for a Knave – Barry Hines

The Quest for Christa T. – Christa Wolf

Chocky – John Wyndham

The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test – Tom Wolfe

The Cubs and Other Stories – Mario Vargas Llosa

One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel García Márquez

The Master and Margarita – Mikhail Bulgakov

Pilgrimage – Dorothy Richardson

The Joke – Milan Kundera

No Laughing Matter – Angus Wilson

The Third Policeman – Flann O’Brien

A Man Asleep – Georges Perec

The Birds Fall Down – Rebecca West

Trawl – B.S. Johnson

In Cold Blood – Truman Capote

The Magus – John Fowles

The Vice-Consul – Marguerite Duras

Wide Sargasso Sea – Jean Rhys

Giles Goat-Boy – John Barth

The Crying of Lot 49 – Thomas Pynchon

Things – Georges Perec

The River Between – Ngugi wa Thiong’o

August is a Wicked Month – Edna O’Brien

God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater – Kurt Vonnegut

Everything That Rises Must Converge – Flannery O’Connor

The Passion According to G.H. – Clarice Lispector

Sometimes a Great Notion – Ken Kesey

Come Back, Dr. Caligari – Donald Bartholme

Albert Angelo – B.S. Johnson

Arrow of God – Chinua Achebe

The Ravishing of Lol V. Stein – Marguerite Duras

Herzog – Saul Bellow

V. – Thomas Pynchon

Cat’s Cradle – Kurt Vonnegut

The Graduate – Charles Webb

Manon des Sources – Marcel Pagnol

The Spy Who Came in from the Cold – John Le Carré

The Girls of Slender Means – Muriel Spark

Inside Mr. Enderby – Anthony Burgess

The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich – Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn

The Collector – John Fowles

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest – Ken Kesey

A Clockwork Orange – Anthony Burgess

Pale Fire – Vladimir Nabokov

The Drowned World – J.G. Ballard

The Golden Notebook – Doris Lessing

Labyrinths – Jorg Luis Borges

Girl With Green Eyes – Edna O’Brien

The Garden of the Finzi-Continis – Giorgio Bassani

Stranger in a Strange Land – Robert Heinlein

Franny and Zooey – J.D. Salinger

A Severed Head – Iris Murdoch

Faces in the Water – Janet Frame

Solaris – Stanislaw Lem

Cat and Mouse – Günter Grass

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie – Muriel Spark

Catch-22 – Joseph Heller

The Violent Bear it Away – Flannery O’Connor

How It Is – Samuel Beckett

Our Ancestors – Italo Calvino

The Country Girls – Edna O’Brien

To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee

Rabbit, Run – John Updike

Promise at Dawn – Romain Gary

Cider With Rosie – Laurie Lee

Billy Liar – Keith Waterhouse

Naked Lunch – William Burroughs

The Tin Drum – Günter Grass

Absolute Beginners – Colin MacInnes

Henderson the Rain King – Saul Bellow

Memento Mori – Muriel Spark

Billiards at Half-Past Nine – Heinrich Böll

Breakfast at Tiffany’s – Truman Capote

The Leopard – Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa

Pluck the Bud and Destroy the Offspring – Kenzaburo Oe

A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute

The Bitter Glass – Eilís Dillon

Things Fall Apart – Chinua Achebe

Saturday Night and Sunday Morning – Alan Sillitoe

Mrs. ‘Arris Goes to Paris – Paul Gallico

Borstal Boy – Brendan Behan

The End of the Road – John Barth

The Once and Future King – T.H. White

The Bell – Iris Murdoch

Jealousy – Alain Robbe-Grillet

Voss – Patrick White

The Midwich Cuckoos – John Wyndham

Blue Noon – Georges Bataille

Homo Faber – Max Frisch

On the Road – Jack Kerouac

Pnin – Vladimir Nabokov

Doctor Zhivago – Boris Pasternak

The Wonderful “O” – James Thurber

Justine – Lawrence Durrell

Giovanni’s Room – James Baldwin

The Lonely Londoners – Sam Selvon

The Roots of Heaven – Romain Gary

Seize the Day – Saul Bellow

The Floating Opera – John Barth

The Lord of the Rings – J.R.R. Tolkien

The Talented Mr. Ripley – Patricia Highsmith

Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov

A World of Love – Elizabeth Bowen

The Trusting and the Maimed – James Plunkett

The Quiet American – Graham Greene

The Last Temptation of Christ – Nikos Kazantzákis

The Recognitions – William Gaddis

The Ragazzi – Pier Paulo Pasolini

Bonjour Tristesse – Françoise Sagan

I’m Not Stiller – Max Frisch

Self Condemned – Wyndham Lewis

The Story of O – Pauline Réage

A Ghost at Noon – Alberto Moravia

Lord of the Flies – William Golding

Under the Net – Iris Murdoch

The Go-Between – L.P. Hartley

The Long Goodbye – Raymond Chandler

The Unnamable – Samuel Beckett

Watt – Samuel Beckett

Lucky Jim – Kingsley Amis

Junkie – William Burroughs

The Adventures of Augie March – Saul Bellow

Go Tell It on the Mountain – James Baldwin

Casino Royale – Ian Fleming

The Judge and His Hangman – Friedrich Dürrenmatt

Invisible Man – Ralph Ellison

The Old Man and the Sea – Ernest Hemingway

Wise Blood – Flannery O’Connor

The Killer Inside Me – Jim Thompson

Memoirs of Hadrian – Marguerite Yourcenar

Malone Dies – Samuel Beckett

Day of the Triffids – John Wyndham

Foundation – Isaac Asimov

The Opposing Shore – Julien Gracq

The Catcher in the Rye – J.D. Salinger

The Rebel – Albert Camus

Molloy – Samuel Beckett

The End of the Affair – Graham Greene

The Abbot C – Georges Bataille

The Labyrinth of Solitude – Octavio Paz

The Third Man – Graham Greene

The 13 Clocks – James Thurber

Gormenghast – Mervyn Peake

The Grass is Singing – Doris Lessing

I, Robot – Isaac Asimov

The Moon and the Bonfires – Cesare Pavese

The Garden Where the Brass Band Played – Simon Vestdijk

Love in a Cold Climate – Nancy Mitford

The Case of Comrade Tulayev – Victor Serge

The Heat of the Day – Elizabeth Bowen

Kingdom of This World – Alejo Carpentier

The Man With the Golden Arm – Nelson Algren

Nineteen Eighty-Four – George Orwell

All About H. Hatterr – G.V. Desani

Disobedience – Alberto Moravia

Death Sentence – Maurice Blanchot

The Heart of the Matter – Graham Greene

Cry, the Beloved Country – Alan Paton

Doctor Faustus – Thomas Mann

The Victim – Saul Bellow

Exercises in Style – Raymond Queneau

If This Is a Man – Primo Levi

Under the Volcano – Malcolm Lowry

The Path to the Nest of Spiders – Italo Calvino

The Plague – Albert Camus

Back – Henry Green

Titus Groan – Mervyn Peake

The Bridge on the Drina – Ivo Andri?

Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh

Animal Farm – George Orwell

Cannery Row – John Steinbeck

The Pursuit of Love – Nancy Mitford

Loving – Henry Green

Arcanum 17 – André Breton

Christ Stopped at Eboli – Carlo Levi

The Razor’s Edge – William Somerset Maugham

Transit – Anna Seghers

Ficciones – Jorge Luis Borges

Dangling Man – Saul Bellow

The Little Prince – Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Caught – Henry Green

The Glass Bead Game – Herman Hesse

Embers – Sandor Marai

Go Down, Moses – William Faulkner

The Outsider – Albert Camus

In Sicily – Elio Vittorini

The Poor Mouth – Flann O’Brien

The Living and the Dead – Patrick White

Hangover Square – Patrick Hamilton

Between the Acts – Virginia Woolf

The Hamlet – William Faulkner

Farewell My Lovely – Raymond Chandler

For Whom the Bell Tolls – Ernest Hemingway

Native Son – Richard Wright

The Power and the Glory – Graham Greene

The Tartar Steppe – Dino Buzzati

Party Going – Henry Green

The Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck

Finnegans Wake – James Joyce

At Swim-Two-Birds – Flann O’Brien

Coming Up for Air – George Orwell

Goodbye to Berlin – Christopher Isherwood

Tropic of Capricorn – Henry Miller

Good Morning, Midnight – Jean Rhys

The Big Sleep – Raymond Chandler

After the Death of Don Juan – Sylvie Townsend Warner

Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day – Winifred Watson

Nausea – Jean-Paul Sartre

Rebecca – Daphne du Maurier

Cause for Alarm – Eric Ambler

Brighton Rock – Graham Greene

U.S.A. – John Dos Passos

Murphy – Samuel Beckett

Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck

Their Eyes Were Watching God – Zora Neale Hurston

The Hobbit – J.R.R. Tolkien

The Years – Virginia Woolf

In Parenthesis – David Jones

The Revenge for Love – Wyndham Lewis

Out of Africa – Isak Dineson (Karen Blixen)

To Have and Have Not – Ernest Hemingway

Summer Will Show – Sylvia Townsend Warner

Eyeless in Gaza – Aldous Huxley

The Thinking Reed – Rebecca West

Gone With the Wind – Margaret Mitchell

Keep the Aspidistra Flying – George Orwell

Wild Harbour – Ian MacPherson

Absalom, Absalom! – William Faulkner

At the Mountains of Madness – H.P. Lovecraft

Nightwood – Djuna Barnes

Independent People – Halldór Laxness

Auto-da-Fé – Elias Canetti

The Last of Mr. Norris – Christopher Isherwood

They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? – Horace McCoy

The House in Paris – Elizabeth Bowen

England Made Me – Graham Greene

Burmese Days – George Orwell

The Nine Tailors – Dorothy L. Sayers

Threepenny Novel – Bertolt Brecht

Novel With Cocaine – M. Ageyev

The Postman Always Rings Twice – James M. Cain

Tropic of Cancer – Henry Miller

A Handful of Dust – Evelyn Waugh

Tender is the Night – F. Scott Fitzgerald

Thank You, Jeeves – P.G. Wodehouse

Call it Sleep – Henry Roth

Miss Lonelyhearts – Nathanael West

Murder Must Advertise – Dorothy L. Sayers

The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas – Gertrude Stein

Testament of Youth – Vera Brittain

A Day Off – Storm Jameson

The Man Without Qualities – Robert Musil

A Scots Quair (Sunset Song) – Lewis Grassic Gibbon

Journey to the End of the Night – Louis-Ferdinand Céline

Brave New World – Aldous Huxley

Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons

To the North – Elizabeth Bowen

The Thin Man – Dashiell Hammett

The Radetzky March – Joseph Roth

The Waves – Virginia Woolf

The Glass Key – Dashiell Hammett

Cakes and Ale – W. Somerset Maugham

The Apes of God – Wyndham Lewis

Her Privates We – Frederic Manning

Vile Bodies – Evelyn Waugh

The Maltese Falcon – Dashiell Hammett

Hebdomeros – Giorgio de Chirico

Passing – Nella Larsen

A Farewell to Arms – Ernest Hemingway

Red Harvest – Dashiell Hammett

Living – Henry Green

The Time of Indifference – Alberto Moravia

All Quiet on the Western Front – Erich Maria Remarque

Berlin Alexanderplatz – Alfred Döblin

The Last September – Elizabeth Bowen

Harriet Hume – Rebecca West

The Sound and the Fury – William Faulkner

Les Enfants Terribles – Jean Cocteau

Look Homeward, Angel – Thomas Wolfe

Story of the Eye – Georges Bataille

Orlando – Virginia Woolf

Lady Chatterley’s Lover – D.H. Lawrence

The Well of Loneliness – Radclyffe Hall

The Childermass – Wyndham Lewis

Quartet – Jean Rhys

Decline and Fall – Evelyn Waugh

Quicksand – Nella Larsen

Parade’s End – Ford Madox Ford

Nadja – André Breton

Steppenwolf – Herman Hesse

Remembrance of Things Past – Marcel Proust

To The Lighthouse – Virginia Woolf

Tarka the Otter – Henry Williamson

Amerika – Franz Kafka

The Sun Also Rises – Ernest Hemingway

Blindness – Henry Green

The Castle – Franz Kafka

The Good Soldier Švejk – Jaroslav Hašek

The Plumed Serpent – D.H. Lawrence

One, None and a Hundred Thousand – Luigi Pirandello

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd – Agatha Christie

The Making of Americans – Gertrude Stein

Manhattan Transfer – John Dos Passos

Mrs. Dalloway – Virginia Woolf

The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Counterfeiters – André Gide

The Trial – Franz Kafka

The Artamonov Business – Maxim Gorky

The Professor’s House – Willa Cather

Billy Budd, Foretopman – Herman Melville

The Green Hat – Michael Arlen

The Magic Mountain – Thomas Mann

We – Yevgeny Zamyatin

A Passage to India – E.M. Forster

The Devil in the Flesh – Raymond Radiguet

Zeno’s Conscience – Italo Svevo

Cane – Jean Toomer

Antic Hay – Aldous Huxley

Amok – Stefan Zweig

The Garden Party – Katherine Mansfield

The Enormous Room – E.E. Cummings

Jacob’s Room – Virginia Woolf

Siddhartha – Herman Hesse

The Glimpses of the Moon – Edith Wharton

Life and Death of Harriett Frean – May Sinclair

The Last Days of Humanity – Karl Kraus

Aaron’s Rod – D.H. Lawrence

Babbitt – Sinclair Lewis

Ulysses – James Joyce

The Fox – D.H. Lawrence

Crome Yellow – Aldous Huxley

The Age of Innocence – Edith Wharton

Main Street – Sinclair Lewis

Women in Love – D.H. Lawrence

Night and Day – Virginia Woolf

Tarr – Wyndham Lewis

The Return of the Soldier – Rebecca West

The Shadow Line – Joseph Conrad

Summer – Edith Wharton

Growth of the Soil – Knut Hamsen

Bunner Sisters – Edith Wharton

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man – James Joyce

Under Fire – Henri Barbusse

Rashomon – Akutagawa Ryunosuke

The Good Soldier – Ford Madox Ford

The Voyage Out – Virginia Woolf

Of Human Bondage – William Somerset Maugham

The Rainbow – D.H. Lawrence

The Thirty-Nine Steps – John Buchan

Kokoro – Natsume Soseki

Locus Solus – Raymond Roussel

Rosshalde – Herman Hesse

Tarzan of the Apes – Edgar Rice Burroughs

The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists – Robert Tressell

Sons and Lovers – D.H. Lawrence

Death in Venice – Thomas Mann

The Charwoman’s Daughter – James Stephens

Ethan Frome – Edith Wharton

Fantômas – Marcel Allain and Pierre Souvestre

Howards End – E.M. Forster

Impressions of Africa – Raymond Roussel

Three Lives – Gertrude Stein

Martin Eden – Jack London

Strait is the Gate – André Gide

Tono-Bungay – H.G. Wells

The Inferno – Henri Barbusse

A Room With a View – E.M. Forster

The Iron Heel – Jack London

The Old Wives’ Tale – Arnold Bennett

The House on the Borderland – William Hope Hodgson

Mother – Maxim Gorky

The Secret Agent – Joseph Conrad

The Jungle – Upton Sinclair

Young Törless – Robert Musil

The Forsyte Sage – John Galsworthy

The House of Mirth – Edith Wharton

Professor Unrat – Heinrich Mann

Where Angels Fear to Tread – E.M. Forster

Nostromo – Joseph Conrad

Hadrian the Seventh – Frederick Rolfe

The Golden Bowl – Henry James

The Ambassadors – Henry James

The Riddle of the Sands – Erskine Childers

The Immoralist – André Gide

The Wings of the Dove – Henry James

Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad

The Hound of the Baskervilles – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Buddenbrooks – Thomas Mann

Kim – Rudyard Kipling

Sister Carrie – Theodore Dreiser

Lord Jim – Joseph Conrad

1800s

Some Experiences of an Irish R.M. – Somerville and Ross

The Stechlin – Theodore Fontane

The Awakening – Kate Chopin

The Turn of the Screw – Henry James

The War of the Worlds – H.G. Wells

The Invisible Man – H.G. Wells

What Maisie Knew – Henry James

Fruits of the Earth – André Gide

Dracula – Bram Stoker

Quo Vadis – Henryk Sienkiewicz

The Island of Dr. Moreau – H.G. Wells

The Time Machine – H.G. Wells

Effi Briest – Theodore Fontane

Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy

The Real Charlotte – Somerville and Ross

The Yellow Wallpaper – Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Born in Exile – George Gissing

Diary of a Nobody – George & Weedon Grossmith

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

News from Nowhere – William Morris

New Grub Street – George Gissing

Gösta Berling’s Saga – Selma Lagerlöf

Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy

The Picture of Dorian Gray – Oscar Wilde

The Kreutzer Sonata – Leo Tolstoy

La Bête Humaine – Émile Zola

By the Open Sea – August Strindberg

Hunger – Knut Hamsun

The Master of Ballantrae – Robert Louis Stevenson

Pierre and Jean – Guy de Maupassant

Fortunata and Jacinta – Benito Pérez Galdés

The People of Hemsö – August Strindberg

The Woodlanders – Thomas Hardy

She – H. Rider Haggard

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde – Robert Louis Stevenson

The Mayor of Casterbridge – Thomas Hardy

Kidnapped – Robert Louis Stevenson

King Solomon’s Mines – H. Rider Haggard

Germinal – Émile Zola

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn – Mark Twain

Bel-Ami – Guy de Maupassant

Marius the Epicurean – Walter Pater

Against the Grain – Joris-Karl Huysmans

The Death of Ivan Ilyich – Leo Tolstoy

A Woman’s Life – Guy de Maupassant

Treasure Island – Robert Louis Stevenson

The House by the Medlar Tree – Giovanni Verga

The Portrait of a Lady – Henry James

Bouvard and Pécuchet – Gustave Flaubert

Ben-Hur – Lew Wallace

Nana – Émile Zola

The Brothers Karamazov – Fyodor Dostoevsky

The Red Room – August Strindberg

Return of the Native – Thomas Hardy

Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy

Drunkard – Émile Zola

Virgin Soil – Ivan Turgenev

Daniel Deronda – George Eliot

The Hand of Ethelberta – Thomas Hardy

The Temptation of Saint Anthony – Gustave Flaubert

Far from the Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy

The Enchanted Wanderer – Nicolai Leskov

Around the World in Eighty Days – Jules Verne

In a Glass Darkly – Sheridan Le Fanu

The Devils – Fyodor Dostoevsky

Erewhon – Samuel Butler

Spring Torrents – Ivan Turgenev

Middlemarch – George Eliot

Through the Looking Glass, and What Alice Found There – Lewis Carroll

King Lear of the Steppes – Ivan Turgenev

He Knew He Was Right – Anthony Trollope

War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy

Sentimental Education – Gustave Flaubert

Phineas Finn – Anthony Trollope

Maldoror – Comte de Lautréaumont

The Idiot – Fyodor Dostoevsky

The Moonstone – Wilkie Collins

Little Women – Louisa May Alcott

Thérèse Raquin – Émile Zola

The Last Chronicle of Barset – Anthony Trollope

Journey to the Centre of the Earth – Jules Verne

Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoevsky

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll

Our Mutual Friend – Charles Dickens

Uncle Silas – Sheridan Le Fanu

Notes from the Underground – Fyodor Dostoevsky

The Water-Babies – Charles Kingsley

Les Misérables – Victor Hugo

Fathers and Sons – Ivan Turgenev

Silas Marner – George Eliot

Great Expectations – Charles Dickens

On the Eve – Ivan Turgenev

Castle Richmond – Anthony Trollope

The Mill on the Floss – George Eliot

The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins

The Marble Faun – Nathaniel Hawthorne

Max Havelaar – Multatuli

A Tale of Two Cities – Charles Dickens

Oblomovka – Ivan Goncharov

Adam Bede – George Eliot

Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert

North and South – Elizabeth Gaskell

Hard Times – Charles Dickens

Walden – Henry David Thoreau

Bleak House – Charles Dickens

Villette – Charlotte Brontë

Cranford – Elizabeth Gaskell

Uncle Tom’s Cabin; or, Life Among the Lonely – Harriet Beecher Stowe

The Blithedale Romance – Nathaniel Hawthorne

The House of the Seven Gables – Nathaniel Hawthorne

Moby-Dick – Herman Melville

The Scarlet Letter – Nathaniel Hawthorne

David Copperfield – Charles Dickens

Shirley – Charlotte Brontë

Mary Barton – Elizabeth Gaskell

The Tenant of Wildfell Hall – Anne Brontë

Wuthering Heights – Emily Brontë

Agnes Grey – Anne Brontë

Jane Eyre – Charlotte Brontë

Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray

The Count of Monte-Cristo – Alexandre Dumas

La Reine Margot – Alexandre Dumas

The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas

The Purloined Letter – Edgar Allan Poe

Martin Chuzzlewit – Charles Dickens

The Pit and the Pendulum – Edgar Allan Poe

Lost Illusions – Honoré de Balzac

A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens

Dead Souls – Nikolay Gogol

The Charterhouse of Parma – Stendhal

The Fall of the House of Usher – Edgar Allan Poe

The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby – Charles Dickens

Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens

The Nose – Nikolay Gogol

Le Père Goriot – Honoré de Balzac

Eugénie Grandet – Honoré de Balzac

The Hunchback of Notre Dame – Victor Hugo

The Red and the Black – Stendhal

The Betrothed – Alessandro Manzoni

Last of the Mohicans – James Fenimore Cooper

The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner – James Hogg

There are a large number on here that I haven’t even heard of, but I’m pretty sure Walden’s up there. Another one of my skim reads that I couldn’t add.

From what I understand, with these kind of books, there are a large number of contributors. You’d have to buy the book to find out why each title was selected. But they come out with new editions every now and then, so the list is never concrete, and of course it’s all highly subjective. It ultimately encourages debate I guess.

ok, I make 41 from that list perhaps (perhaps because of misreads discounted, prints under different titles, etc). Now I have maybe a thousand books and was happy to read them – some over and over. Would I be happier if I read this list instead? I do not believe so. I may encounter more from this list somewhere, and if so look forward to enjoying them. Thank you for the post.

Most of the ones I’ve read were read in an educational environment. I definitely don’t think I’d read more from this list now just because they’re believed to be quality books. The kind of books I like to read are likely to never make it on this kind of list. And I’m ok with that.

I’m not even wasting my time counting what I’ve read out of the 1001 😀 I’ll try in 2 years time. Make sure your blog is still on by then. I’m only 20, wanting to read these books (while reading others), I could read 50 in a year, which makes 20 years to read them all. Hey, will you still be around then?